Dutch audience for Women's Euro opener betters Champions League final

Sunday’s opening match at the Uefa Women’s Euro attracted a record television audience in the Netherlands as the hosts defeated Norway 1-0 in Utrecht.

NOS, the Dutch public-service broadcaster, registered an audience of over 2.1 million viewers for the game, which was won by Shanice Janice van de Sanden’s second-half strike.

The audience is the highest-ever figure for a match of the Dutch women’s national team, bettering the 1.5 million recorded for the England-Netherlands semi-final at the 2009 Women’s Euro.

By comparison, the final of the 2016-17 men’s Uefa Champions League final between Real Madrid and Juventus was watched by just under 1.7 million viewers on SBS 6, the Dutch free-to-air commercial channel.

The Netherlands’ opening win comfortably generated the largest audience for a sports programme on Sunday, with the victory of Dutch rider Bauke Mollema in the 15th stage of the Tour de France drawing an average of 927,000 viewers (and a peak of over 2 million) on NOS.